Courtesy of Val Zapata
- Val Zapata turned her sneaker-collecting hobby into a seven-figure business.
- She scaled her business by leveraging the live-selling platform Whatnot.
- Zapata predicts a live-selling boom in the US and advises honing live-selling skills for success.
When Val Zapata reconnected with her childhood hobby of collecting sneakers at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she didn't intend to make money.
Finding unique sneakers on marketplaces like OfferUp and Facebook was a way to decompress during a stressful time. If she made money by flipping a pair, that was a bonus.
The more she bought and resold, the more viable the business became — and it was a lot more fun than her day job working as a life insurance broker.